Pinball is at a crossroads. Video games you can play at home have threatened to eat pinball's lunch a few times, but this time it's serious, because video games in 1995 are getting very good.
Faced with this existential threat, the pinball companies -- especially Bally Williams -- respond in the best way they can: by cranking out pinball tables that are also very good. Just absolute bangers. Some of these are still the tables we think of when we think of what pinball should be. 1995 is going to be another three-parter and it starts tonight.
One well-regarded table we'll see tonight is Theatre of Magic, which uses mirrors, magnets, and trap doors to actually do stage-magic things to the pinball. It's not great for competition because it plays too long and too repetitively when you're good at it. But that's okay, I'm not!
On the jankier side of 1995 pinball tables, we'll be facing a Shaq Attaq followed by a shark attark.
Going live at 8pm Eastern (@042):